United States v. Treasury Employees, 513 U.S. 454, 24 (1995)

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Cite as: 513 U. S. 454 (1995)

Opinion of the Court

with the honoraria ban's dubious application not merely to policymakers, whose loss of honoraria was offset by a salary increase, but to all Executive Branch employees below grade GS-16 as well.

These anomalies in the text of the statute and regulations underscore our conclusion: The speculative benefits the honoraria ban may provide the Government are not sufficient to justify this crudely crafted burden on respondents' freedom to engage in expressive activities. Section 501(b) violates the First Amendment.

V

After holding § 501(b) invalid because it was not as carefully tailored as it should have been, the Court of Appeals approved a remedy that is itself arguably overinclusive. The relief granted by the District Court and upheld by the Court of Appeals enjoined enforcement of the entire honoraria ban as applied to the entire Executive Branch of the Government.22 That injunction provides relief to senior executives who are not parties to this case. It also prohibits enforcement of the statute even when an obvious nexus exists between the employee's job and either the subject matter of his or her expression or the interest of the person paying for it. As an alternative to its request for outright reversal, the Government asks us to modify the judgment by upholding the statute as it applies, first, to employees not party to this action and, second, to situations in which a nexus is present.

For three reasons, we agree with the Government's first suggestion—that the relief should be limited to the parties before the Court. First, although the occasional case requires us to entertain a facial challenge in order to vindicate

22 The Court of Appeals did not reach the ban's applications to employees of the Legislative and Judicial Branches because its analysis of the legislative history convinced it that, had Congress believed the ban unconstitutional as to the Executive Branch, it still would have applied the ban to the other branches. 990 F. 2d, at 1279.

477

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